Household Gods

Julia was waiting at the tavern, fairly dancing with eagerness. She barely let Nicole get in through the door before she started in. “Did you see him? Did you?” She might have been talking about a god, or a god’s first cousin.

Nicole almost hated to disappoint her. “No, I didn’t. I had to leave a petition with an aide. We’ll see if anything comes of it.” It had better, she thought. If Marcus Aurelius ignored her case, how much trouble would picketing the town-council building cause? Plenty, she would imagine. She almost smiled at the prospect.

“I hope something does come of it,” Julia said. “I think it will, I really do. He is supposed to be a good man.”

“We’ll see,” Nicole said. She wasn’t as sure of Marcus Aurelius’ goodness as Julia was. He was the Roman Emperor, after all. She’d taken time to find out what exactly that meant. He wasn’t a king, not exactly, and it wasn’t necessarily hereditary, though it could be. What Marcus Aurelius was, was the chief political figure in a vast, ancient, and sometimes terribly corrupt empire.

Nicole had precious little use for politicians — which, considering the state of politics in late-twentieth- century America, was hardly surprising. As far as she was concerned, the higher a politician rose, the more lies he had to tell to get there, and the more likely he’d tell even bigger lies once he got to the top.

Julia didn’t share Nicole’s worries, or her cynicism either. She was already off on another subject. “While you were out,” she said, “a crier came by. There’ll be grain in the city in a day or two.”

That caught Nicole’s attention. “Oh! That is good news.” Bread, real bread. Cakes. Buns and rolls and… She stopped before she got carried away. “I hope the price isn’t too outrageous. Though they probably wouldn’t dare to try too much gouging, not with the Emperor right here to see it.”

Before Julia could answer, an odd, rhythmic clanking brought them both to the windows and the open door. This wasn’t the sharp clash and clang of swordplay. It was duller, steadier. Down the street toward the eastern gate marched a somber procession of Marcomanni and Quadi — Nicole never had learned to tell the tribes apart — chained together in gangs of ten. Many, many gangs often. Roman soldiers herded them onward, some with knotted whips, others with drawn swords.

“They’re on their way to the slave markets,” Julia said with vindictive satisfaction. “I hope they all get worked to death in the mines.”

But Nicole was watching the legionaries, not the Germans. Was one of them the man who’d violated her with such callous — practiced? — efficiency? Of itself, her left hand rose to her neck. She’d felt a Roman blade there. Had she given the legionary any trouble, she had no doubt that blade would have drunk her life. In the capture of a city, what was one body more or less?

Her gaze might have gone fearfully from one Roman soldier to another, but more people were watching the Quadi and Marcomanni. Passersby on the sidewalk jeered the captured barbarians. One of the locals almost echoed Julia: “A short life and a merry one, boys, grubbing for iron or lead!” He laughed, loud and long.

The Germans ignored him. They must have heard a hundred such jeers as they marched through the city. Their heads were down, that had been carried with such casual arrogance. Their broad shoulders were bent, their feet shuffling, not even a hint of their old swagger.

A shriek of raw rage split the afternoon. Nicole jumped half out of her skin. “That’s Antonina!” Julia exclaimed. She sprinted for the doorway, with Nicole in close pursuit.

Nicole got there just in time to watch Antonina burst from her own door, dodge a legionary with a move Michael Jordan would have envied, and smash an enormous pot over the head of one of the Germans. Shards flew like shrapnel. The German staggered. Blood poured down his face. Nicole marveled that he didn’t fall over dead.

“Mithras, lady, what was that for?” bellowed the legionary Antonina had evaded.

“What do you think?” she shot back. “The day the town fell, he and a gang of his cousins raped me right here in the street.” She tried to kick the prisoner in the crotch, but he twisted away; her foot caught him in the hipbone. She followed him down the street, kicking him and cursing as vilely as she knew how. The guards laughed and clapped and cheered her on.

Nicole was astonished at the bolt of jealousy that pierced her. Antonina had at least a measure of revenge for what had happened to her. She had closure. When she finally left off trying to maim the barbarian who’d raped her, she walked back toward her house with her shoulders straight and her head high. She had, at last, put the nightmare behind her.

And what have I got? Nicole’s laughter had a bitter edge. Closure? She laughed again. How was she supposed to avenge herself on the Roman legionary who’d forced himself on her and into her? She couldn’t identify him five minutes after he shot his seed into her. She’d never recognize him now. He was — a man. That had been an advantage in the United States. It wasn’t just an advantage here. It was everything.

Her gaze flicked to Liber and Libera, sitting serenely in their plaque behind the bar. They’d given her exactly what she’d thought she wanted. What a cruel gift it had turned out to be.

And now they would not send her home. Maybe they were busy. Maybe they just didn’t care. Maybe they were laughing at her, just as Frank must have done when he started his affair with Dawn.

She looked back toward Antonina’s house. Her sour-tempered neighbor was getting on with things — and she couldn’t. That would take a miracle. She’d already had one; that must be her quota. It was more than most people ever got.

At last, the parade ended. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of Marcomanni and Quadi had shambled past her doorway. Nicole kept an eye out for Antonina, in case she emerged to smash more crockery over the head of an astonished German, but that door stayed shut, and Antonina stayed within.

As the last straggling prisoner shuffled out of sight, pricked on by a sword in his backside, Julia stretched and wriggled and sighed. “It’s so good to be back inside the empire again.”

“Why?” Nicole asked bleakly. “Do you feel so much safer with the heroic legionaries to protect you?”

Julia nodded automatically. Then memory struck: she bit her lip.

Nicole didn’t tax her with it. Nicole’s problem was Nicole’s own. She did her best to get on with the rest of the day, to do what she would normally have done: look after the tavern, rustle up meals, make sure the three of them were fed. Once the grain came in, if the price was low enough, she could open the tavern again. That would be good. That would take her mind off — things.

Sometimes, for a few minutes at a stretch, she actually managed to forget. Then something — a shadow, a voice in the street, the clank of armor as a soldier strutted past — would bring back memory: reeling, falling, scale mail pressed to her body, hard hand ripping at her drawers. Then she would start to shake. Almost, she wished he’d cut her throat when he was done. Then she wouldn’t have to relive it, over and over again.

The sun sank in the northwest, throwing a long shaft of sunlight into the tavern’s doorway. The interior brightened then, as much as it ever could. But her gloom was pitch-black. No mere sunlight could begin to pierce it.

Shadows in the doorway made her look up; made her tense, too, involuntarily, braced for fight or flight. Even in silhouette, she could tell that the men she saw were strangers: they wore togas, as few of her customers ever had. “Mistress Umma, the tavernkeeper?” one of them asked in Latin more elegant than that commonly spoken in Carnuntum.

“Yes,” she said after a pause. Then: “Who are you?”

He didn’t deign to answer that. He stood just on the threshold, though it meant he had to raise his voice slightly to converse with Nicole by the bar. There was no way, his attitude said, he was going farther in. Even as far as he’d gone, he’d need a good, long stint in the baths to wash off the stink of commoner.

That rankled. And never mind that Nicole had felt remarkably much like it when she first came to Carnuntum. He wasn’t too savory, either, by American standards. Not without soap or deodorant.

He sniffed loudly. In that Latin equivalent of an Oxford accent, he declaimed — said was too mild a word: “The Emperor has received your plea. I am instructed to invite you to supper with him, to discuss the matter.”

He didn’t ask if she’d come. That would have given her too much choice in the matter.

Just for that, she was tempted to be too busy. But the Emperor wasn’t necessarily responsible for the rudeness of his staff — and he was the Emperor. If she tried to play power games with him, she would lose. She